Voalte has a new white paper, The Smartphone Tsunami: Will Your Hospital Sink or Swim?, which nicely lays out, at a high level, the need for hospitals to develop a mobility strategy to meet the growing number of clinicians using smart phones in the clinical setting.
Healthagen signs Porter Adventist Hospital (CO) as its newest customer with premium facility listings in Healthagen’s iTriage mobile app. Porter will also publish ED wait times through iTriage, becoming the first hospital in Colorado to do so.
A new Kalorama report predicts that the remote patient monitoring market will grow by 26% annually through 2014 and reach over $6 billion this year. That’s impressive growth and I imagine the projections assume that payers will cover certain services.
EXTENSION, Inc, which recently announced its new HealthAlert mobile clinical communications platform and first customer, Doctors Hospital of Sarasota, release a statement that the FDA has reviewed HealthAlert for Nurses and decided there is no other communication tool currently available that is “substantially equivalent”. This may open the door to a new FDA device classification around clinical communication. We’ll have to see how this unfolds and if other smart phone-based clinical communications vendors submit devices for FDA approval.
A new survey by Euro RSCG Tonic finds that nearly 78% of people would try remote monitoring, while about half would be willing to try a virtual visit or use a remote device for a check-up. The survey did not discern if the cause of the results was fear of provider shortages or enthusiasm for technology.
MedFlash PHR developer Connectyx, which we reported on recently as it added ecommerce for medical equipment and medications, this week announces the addition of an advance directive/living will tool for members. This is an valuable offering in getting get people thinking about the Five Wishes, as physicians are increasingly trying to do.
Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) launches Epic’s MyChart mobile app for patient records access. OHSU has been providing MyChart web access to patients since 2006.
The annual American Telemedicine Association meeting is ranked in the top 50 fastest growing trade shows. This year’s meeting in May is expected to draw over 4,000 attendees. I wonder if HIMSS and other HIT events are seeing the same growth.
A New Hampshire urologist creates a free iPhone app to help inform patients about prostate issues as well as track relevant information about prostate health. I’m not sure how many patients can log fluid intact and urine output in ccs.
Avera Health (SD) gets $1.1 million from the most recent round of USDA telemedicine grants. We recently reported on Avera for some new eICU offerings made possible because of other private grants. I have an intensivist friend who keeps telling me that eICU is a huge opportunity that health systems should try to capitalize on as a potential profit center. I’m curious to get reader thoughts on this.
A recent report out of China says that production of the iPad 2 will begin in February, which will keep it on track for launch in April. The iPhone 5 will begin manufacturing in May, the article says.
Third-party security applications by Good Technology, MobileIron, and NetHawk are making a more enterprise-friendly iPhone, making the device more easily digestible by CIOs. I’ve heard of MobileIron used by healthcare organizations, but I’d be curious to hear if any readers are familiar with others used to secure Apple devices.
Travis Good is in his final year of an MD/MBA program and is involved with multiple health IT startups.
AirStrip releases AirStrip Cardiology for the iPad. The above demo video is pretty impressive, as the app enables users at login to view all ECGs awaiting a read or opinion, whether the patient is on the floor, in route to the hospital (if that capability exists with EMS), or in the ED. While viewing the ECG, the user can zoom in and out on each ECG lead and even use embedded calipers to measure segments, meaning no more counting big and little boxes. Obviously this is dependent on AirStrip having access to digital ECGs, but still, the value of having all of this on an iPad, and being able to scroll through present and past readings, is very powerful.
A new report from the Enterprise Forum of the Northwest finds that baby boomers will drive the mHealth market to $4.6 billion in 2014 and $12 billion in 2020. Not surprisingly, the driving forces behind this are the desire to remain independent and reduce costs of chronic diseases. I was surprised to learn that baby boomers own a third of all smart phones. The full report can be found here.
Two Wake Forest professors develop an animated Mobility Assessment Tool (MAT) to help assess and track mobility status. The MAT is available on iPad and PC. Apparently they have found the that by using computer animations of different tasks (walking up stairs, walking up an uneven slope), they can gain better insight into patient mobility status than with standard questionnaires currently in use.
iPhone ECG maker AliveCor, which showcased its new device earlier this month, announces that an Android version will be available soon.
Another smart phone-based diagnostic tool, which will officially be launched at the American Academy of Dermatology conference next month, is the handyscope from FotoFinder. The device is an iPhone accessory that serves as a dermatoscope, capturing, storing, and transmitting digital images of skin lesions. My wife is a dermatologist and I’m shocked by the number of standard iPhone images she texts back and forth with colleagues, so I’m sure she’ll have some interest in this device. Also, the telemedicine applications of this are huge. Cost is ~$1,500.
On the heels of the release of HealthAlert, a Cisco-integrated mobile clinical workflow communications application, developer EXTENSION, Inc. announces that Doctors Hospital of Sarasota, an HCA-affiliate, has signed a deal to use HealthAlert for Nurses.
WiFi-based RTLS vendor Ekahau teams with Army asset tracking vendor Conexus to provide asset tracking services for over 5,000 pieces of mobile equipment at Brooke Army Medical Center (TX), with plans to grow to over 20,000 pieces. Brooke is the largest military hospital in the US with over 450 beds.
Several new studies find that rural and Native communities in the US suffer disproportionately in terms of health outcomes due to lack of access to health IT resources, including mHealth and telemedicine.
Coincidentally, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announces 45 new telemedicine grants through the USDA totaling $14 million, touting it as “another step forward for rural America”.
The military’s successful use of mobile and online platforms for engaging and educating patients is helping to drive the commercial side of mHealth and telemedicine.
As an example of the military’s use of mHealth technologies, the VA has a pilot in which returning veterans are issued a mobile device that allows them to store their medical record, find VA-related information, and communicate with providers. The article mentions the use of FaceTime for video calling, so I assume the devices being used are from Apple.
Insurers are increasingly reaching out to consumers through social media channels to both push information and collect consumer opinions. The article highlights that most insurers are not using social media or mobile devices to engage providers, but that they are exploring strategies in these areas.
The SayMedicine mobile app (iPhone – $4.99) audibly pronounces medical terms to help doctors and students prevent embarrassment when they encounter a new term. It also allows searching for more info on terms using eMedicine, Google, and Wikipedia. I can’t really imagine using something like this, as the chance of being caught using it carries more embarrassment than the mispronunciation it is supposed to prevent.
A blog post from GE Healthcare’s CMO, Derek Wagner, calls for comments to the FCC’s proposed establishment of a frequency spectrum that would support body sensor networks (BSNs). The post also covers the potential advances and improvements in healthcare from BSNs.
Travis Good is in his final year of an MD/MBA program and is involved with multiple health IT startups.
A commentary in the recent Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) outlines the functionality necessary to create a PHR that is patient-centered. The five key levels of functionality, which are highlighted in the above image, are:
Collect patient information;
Integrate patient information with clinical information from EMRs or claims data;
Interpret or translate health information so patients can understand it;
Provide personalized clinical recommendations;
Enable patient action.
Congrats to our sponsor Voalte for signing Texas Children’s Hospital to use Voalte’s integrated, iPhone-based communication system. Texas Children’s will be the first pediatric facility and first facility in TX to use Voalte’s platform.
Telestrokologist: “a strokologist who is proficient with telemedicine tools and techniques necessary for remote stroke practice.” This is the definition given in an article byBart M. Demaerschalk of Mayo Clinic, Arizona that highlights how telestroke works, how we know it works (evidence), and future applications.
Acoustic wave biosensors, about the size of a dime and costing ~$10, can be used to rapidly detect different types of viruses. This could change Minute Clinics into vending machines or improve the onsite capabilities of providers. The sensors work with any water-based bodily fluid and are currently under review by the FDA.
St. Mary’s Healthcare Center (SD) launches eICU, backed by Avera McKennan Hospital (SD). The service is made possible through a $1.5 million, three-year grant.
WebMD releases Medscape Mobile, which is an app geared toward medical professionals, for the iPad and Android devices. The app is already available on BlackBerry and iPhone with over 700,000 users.
Connentyx, maker of the MedFlash Personal Health and Wellness Management System (a jazzed-up PHR – mobile app, Web portal, USB flash drive), signs a marketing deal with Health Matters International (HMI) to begin offering health related products, meds, and services to MedFlash users at discounted rates. Connectyx also has deals with provider associations and is moving aggressively in the consumer health space, increasing the number of value-add, and hopefully revenue-generating, services available to customers using its PHR.
ChildCount+ creator Matt Berg has a fantastic post about mHealth trends for 2011. The trends are geared towards applications in developing countries, so you won’t see anything on mobile PHRs or iPhone-linked home monitoring devices, but you will get a good sense of all of the exciting things happenings around the world in mHealth.
Current mHealth job openings at AT&T include Executive Director CMIO, with responsibility to “guide and direct the overall strategy of AT&T’s healthcare solutions practice by providing industry expertise in evidence-based medicine, health outcomes, disease management and wellness.” If you’re a licensed, practicing MD looking for what seems like it would be a pretty cool job and you’re willing to move to NJ, you can apply via a link on the site.
Telemedicine company Guardian 24/7, which offers concierge-type remote medical services in the US, partners with Paul Chester Children’s Hope Foundation (PCCHF) to provide consultations to doctors working in Kenya.
UCSF opens a state-of-the-art Teaching and Learning Center to improve provider education through various simulation tools. The cool part is that the center includes telemedicine facilities, so students — and I assume residents or practicing docs — can simulate a remote encounter over a webcam. The best my school had was a phone to speak with actors pretending to be parents with sick kids.
Dr. Sulaiman Al-Habib Medical Group (Saudi Arabia) begins “Baby Ultra Sound MMS”, which sends ultrasound images and video to cell phones of expectant parents. Qualcomm is one of the partners in the service. Do they offer this in the US? Because it seems so simple, and because just two days ago while I was cleaning out my car, I discovered the dirty, folded ultrasound images for my son. I’m obviously not the most organized person, but getting things onto my iPhone assures I can at least back it up to Dropbox.
The VA makes improvements to its online benefits application by simplifying the questions and adding a live chat feature.
Below are a some mhealth/wireless related HIMSS11 education sessions for those attending next month.
Telemedicine outsourcing leader Specialists On Call (SOC) celebrates several achievements from 2010. SOC provides telemedicine services to over 100 hospitals in 12 states and in 2010 performed more than 11,000 emergency consults resulting in more than 600 doses of tPA to stroke patients. Initially focused on neurology services, SOC has expanded to pediatrics and psych. SOC seems exceptionally well placed to become a leading provider of remote specialty services to ACOs, becoming a part of the ACOs, without any geographic restrictions, in the process.
With the growing prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs), grants are being used to explore the use of telehealth in both the diagnosis and treatment of ASDs. This post presents some of the findings from a report on pilot programs in Missouri geared towards remote services for ASD patients and families. This is definitely interesting to me, but the concern I would have is around the reliability of diagnosis, which the report found to be dependent on the severity of symptoms. I just can’t imagine parents being satisfied with an uncertain diagnosis.
A new Apple mobile app, depressioncheck (free), is a mobile version of the M-3 Checklist, a validated three-minute screener for mood disorders including depression, PTSD, anxiety, and bipolar disorder.
San Diego-based startup Wellcomm releases an open architecture smart phone app, and apparently platform, that the article claims integrates all sources of healthcare data, though it only specifically mentions Google Health and OpenMRS, the open source EMR used in many developing countries.
This article highlights technology that can be used to by seniors to help keep them living independently longer. The categories of products include sensors for activity monitoring, GPS for people tracing, and intelligent pill boxes for medication compliance. The most interesting point in the article is intuitive but still valuable, that nine of ten AARP members would give up some privacy to stay in their homes longer. If you’ve spent any time in assisted living facilities, you’d think 90% is pretty low.
The Iowa Board of Medicine decides not to sanction Planned Parenthood of the Heartland physician Susan Haskell for remotely administering abortion pills after videoconferences. The practice, which some have coined “tele-abortions”, has been controversial, though this ruling allows Planned Parenthood to continue it.
This is another cool tablet application in the hospital. Kaweah Delta Hospital (CA) is conducting patient surveys on iPads before discharge instead of sending them in the mail. The survey’s have photos of docs that cared for the patient to help the patient give more informed answers.
A California dentist offers patients a mobile app to report symptoms, including emergency dental issues, and get immediate feedback.
A new study out of Switzerland finds continuous wireless monitoring of ocular pressures for glaucoma patients to be safe and effective. This is similar to the value of continuously monitoring things like blood pressure, especially when assessing dosing regimens.
A new iPhone app translates items you eat into the exercise equivalent to burn off those calories. It seems like a pretty simple tool, but I’m not really sure if somebody would pay $2.99 for this and bother using it when they want an ice cream cone.
Travis Good is in his final year of an MD/MBA program and is involved with multiple health IT startups.
Clinical communications leader Vocera acquires Wallace Wireless, which specializes in message delivery to smartphones. The story says Wallace has implementations at over 200 sites but it does not specify what the number is specifically for healthcare.
The list of intelligent pill options to automatically track and improve medication compliance is growing, which makes sense considering estimates put the cost of medication use errors at anywhere from $100-$300 billion annually. It seems like combining these compliance tools, based on technology, with better integration of services like medication therapy management, into care delivery, would be effective at saving significant cost in the system.
A new study on remote smoking cessation programs shows that quit-rates doubled when phone calls were used in combination with web-based tools compared to web alone. This seems to be a growing trend, which to me makes a lot of sense. Automated tools alone are not going to be enough to change behavior, which is a major part of the problem with health in America.
A new survey of doctors on Sermo finds that Epocrates is the most commonly used mobile app on a day-to-day basis and the iPhone is the most commonly used device. The survey only had 73 participants so it’s hard to read too much into it.
Mobile healthcare platform developer Diversinet signs a five-year contract to make Mihealth Global Systems the exclusive reseller of Diversinet’s Mobisecure Platform outside of the United States. Mihealth is focused on consumer-facing mobile health applications, which, from I can tell, means a mobile PHR. The deal has minimum commitments to Diversinet of $5 million.
Nurse call solutions company Rauland-Borg Corporation partners with Voalte to bring calls from Rauland-Borg’s Responder 5 Nurse Call System to Voalte’s iPhone app, improving time to response.
With the iPhone 4 available on Verizon starting February 10, comparisons are already being made between the devices being carried on Verizon’s vs. AT&T’s network. This article highlights the three major differences:
Verizon users can turn the iPhone 4 into a mobile hotspot, connecting up to 5 wireless devices to the Internet. No information is available yet on data plans or rates so we’ll wait and see how useful this feature really is.
Verizon’s CDMA network does not allow you to use the phone and Internet at the same time. For me this is basically a deal breaker as I often use my iPhone for both data and phone simultaneously.
The Verizon iPhone has a slightly different shape which is supposedly tailored to Verizon’s CDMA network, though the article speculates it might just be resolution to the “death grip” issue with the iPhone 4.
Healthagen announces that its mobile app, iTriage, has been downloaded over 1 million times over the past 12 months and is used in more than 80 countries. iTriage provides symptom checking and facility information, with premium listings for subscribing health providers.
A new survey finds that almost 70% of patients wish they could find more information about primary care providers online. This comes right after the launch of the Physician Compare site from CMS, which hasn’t gotten the best reviews. I’ve used Kaiser’s doc search and I like it. It’s simple and has education, location, a narrative, and specific areas of interest.
iPad EMR vendor DrChrono is donating and implementing its mobile EMR to World Wide Village’s Community Health Initiative in Haiti. I’m not sure who’s donating the hardware but it is certainly a cool application in a place that can use all the help it can get.
Kevin Rose, founder of super news site Digg, claims to “have on good authority” that the second generation iPad will be announced in the next several weeks and available for purchase shortly thereafter. He also claims it will have front/back cameras and a retina display, which is what I’m holding out for.
The Happy Hospitalist has a glowing review of the use of his iPad on hospital rounds, finding and even calculating his increased efficiency in terms of revenue for the hospital.
Butler Memorial Hospital (PA) makes improvements in operations and patient care from the installation of a system combining RTLS from Ekahau, a visibility platform from Intelligent Insites, and communications from Vocera.
Travis Good is in his final year of an MD/MBA program and is involved with multiple health IT startups.
